from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Hundreds of thousands of people have already applied for a one-way ticket to Mars for the Mars One program to establish a human colony on the red planet by 2023. Funding for Mars One is expected to come from a reality TV show as well as sponsorships and donations -- and even IP licensing from any technology it develops along the way. Mars One appears to have collected over $150,000 in donations so far, so there's at least some interest in the concept (though the total cost for a Mars trip could easily be billions). Here are just a few more links on some other plans to get humans into space.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Canadian "rockstar" astronaut Chris Hadfield, who just returned from the International Space Station, says he's retiring. (Yep, he's the guy who performed David Bowie's "Space Oddity" in zero-g while orbiting the Earth.) While he may be retiring from the Canadian Space Agency, he may not be done with spaceflight just yet, as he sees commercial spaceflight as a real possibility. In the past decade, several private commercial spaceflight ventures have been seriously developing and testing their own spacecraft, and eventually "commercial astronauts" will be needed to help run commercial space missions and space tourism flights. Here's some of the latest news in commercial spaceflight.